3 Main Reasons Why People Obey

386 Words2 Pages
There are three main reasons why people obey - Legitimate Authority, Graduated Commitment and Agentic Shift, these are the three reasons identified by Milgram. Legitimate Authority is when people feel compelled to obey people with a high social status (Legitimate social power), their role is usually defined by society, and we generally respect the person with power because of the responsibility or hardship required in their role. This can be found with Policemen, we are more likely to respond to them and obey their orders than a traffic warden. We may still obey the authority figure even if we are asked to do something immoral or unethical. This was found during Milgram's study, the teachers obeyed the researcher because of his legitimate social standing at the prestigious university, Yale. Milgram's study helps support my last statement that the location and the social standing of the authority figure will alter the outcome of a person's reaction. More experiments similar to Milgram's study have been carried out cross culturally. Respect for authority is different depending on the country. For example Australia has a tradition of questioning authority (40% went to 450V) unlike Germany which has a tradition of being very obedient (WWII Holocaust). However the results vary from person to person, this was found in Milgram's study for example one person was Jewish and they used this as a reason to not obey. Another reason is Graduated Commitment, this was used in Milgram's study, and the participants where gradually pulled into giving higher voltage shocks as they found it difficult to stop the procedure as the difference between shocks was relatively low. This is known as "the foot in the door technique". Firstly people agreed to participate in Milgram's study so they were more inclined to continue in the experiment. They then drew lots so it appeared it

More about 3 Main Reasons Why People Obey

Open Document